


Lord, I worry (about love and violence)

by Analinea



Series: Be still, my whumper's heart [18]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: (by that I mean cuddles actually but in a romantic way), (shoutout to my ace headcanon since it's awareness week), Doctor Whump, F/F, I Think I Need A Doctor, I love them but like y'all made me ship thasmin so i need the girls to have some alone time, Ignoring an Injury, Internal Organ Injury, Whumptober 2020, Wink wink nudge nudge, also i'm still writing for a nebulous future era where Ryan and Graham have left, but also hopeful, but angsty, day 29, day 30, it's light, it's what I read somewhere ages ago does it still stand?, these girls hurt me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:20:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27286330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Analinea/pseuds/Analinea
Summary: Yaz thought she was living the best life she could picture for herself, until someone broke the limits of imagination; someone she could never drink enough of. A stranger, a Doctor. Her Doctor.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Series: Be still, my whumper's heart [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947337
Kudos: 16
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Lord, I worry (about love and violence)

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from that one poem that has haunted me for the last two years:  
>  _i killed a plant once because i  
>  gave  
> it too much water. lord, i worry  
> that love is violence  
> -José Olivarez-_
> 
> Also this is still only Brit picked by Chrome's dictionary.
> 
> Also I'm talking about Devdas, in the beginning.
> 
> Also I love you all, enjoy:

Yaz remembers a scene from a movie she had watched as a kid, so long ago its title has faded to disparate letters and silent songs in shades of red and yellows and vibrant greens.

One of the characters had a glass full of an amber drink in his hand; no words are left in Yaz’s memory, but the image of heart a glass and love the liquid filling it is still clear. What had been the point of that moment? It might have been to ask what would happen, if you kept pouring love in. 

Yaz’s answer would be about a relentless thirst that keeps it from spilling over. 

She thought she was living the best life she could picture for herself, until someone broke the limits of imagination; someone she could never drink enough of. A stranger, a Doctor. Her Doctor.

She wonders then, if two hearts means more room for love; if that’s how Yaz can compete with the whole universe for a place between the four beats in the Doctor’s chest. 

Love speaks many languages– it might be the translation matrix, but Yaz grows fluent in the Doctor’s ways of expressing it. Her gifts, her gazes, the occasional staying still. Shaky breaths when they reach towards each other with intent. How she allows Yaz to hold her. Even, once, in words so preciously rare that Yaz will cherish them in all the secret hours of her life. 

The Doctor seems to be a woman of words to the neophyte, but Yaz learns to decipher her silences instead. 

She  _ sees _ . 

Riding a horse isn’t a novelty anymore, having been to the past enough to get used to it, but Yaz isn’t a master of the art. The Doctor, on the other hand, shows the ease of practice. 

Usually, anyway. Yaz watches her from behind, back stiff as she hunches to the left, reins in one hand while the other arm is cradled against her middle. The futility of asking –again– if she’s hurt doesn’t deter Yaz from trying; the answer is the one she expects, strained: “I’m fine, Yaz, not even a bruise!”

_ Be honest _ , Yaz silently wishes, biting her lips at the laborious breathing in the Doctor’s pauses. In each of them, Yaz also hears the heavy thump of a body hitting the packed earth at the foot of the low cliff they were standing on; no song she sings to herself covers it up. Her heart is still sore from the panic of turning at the Doctor’s quiet “oops” before she slid and fell down. 

The Doctor was already sitting up when Yaz managed to get to her side, and has been going on like nothing happened since. What help can Yaz offer, when she won’t be shown the hurt? 

She is failing, in this. She feels like anyone else would have been able to get through– maybe someone has, in the nebulous years before the Doctor was  _ her _ Doctor. Yaz isn’t naive enough to think she’s the first one to have been loved by the person wearing this name, even if she’s the first for these eyes.

But here is the thing about traumatised people: they won’t stop believing they’re too broken for anyone to choose bearing the long road with them. So they hide their weaknesses, Yaz  _ knows _ . She doesn’t fault the Doctor for the pretences, because she understands in the most intimate way. 

“Time Lords are more complex than that!” the Doctor would say even if her haunted gaze is one Yaz has seen many times before in training. Is it ego or is it fear, she wonders; with time she gathered that Time Lords are only complicated in their relationship with time, but feelings transcend species and break through wisdom as easily as a bullet pierces a heart. 

Here is another answer: Yaz is inside the glass of her heart and love comes up to her ankles, knees, hips, throat, over her head; her instinct is to hold her breath to save herself even when the pressure on her ribs becomes agony. Then comes the hurt of giving in after the struggle, but also the peace. 

She doesn’t know any other kind of love than the one she drowns in until it becomes her air and she knows she’ll suffocate without it. It’s dangerous; what other choice does she have but to accept it now that it’s in her lungs? 

She just hopes the Doctor understands it for what it is: not a love that will diminish for the cracks in her soul, nor for the ugly, angry parts she so desperately tries to conceal. 

Or the violence of hearing her cough wetly as she tips to the side.

Yaz sees it happen, but can’t get off her own horse fast enough to catch her. She can only hear the echo of the first fall and choke on it while she runs. 

Time Lords heal, she tells herself, falling to her knees on a prayer that everything will be alright. The Doctor can’t pull in any air for a too long second, face going pale before filling with red spots. Her first gasp sounds painful, though it comes as a relief to Yaz.

The Doctor rolls on her back, head tilted back; Yaz takes the opportunity to grip the hem of her shirts and look under. Her chest is the colour of a child’s hands on afternoons spent picking blueberries; Yaz freezes. 

“I’m fine.” The words are more an idea than a sound; she coughs again and has to twist to let blood just a shade wrong spill from between her lips. Yaz wants to cry.

“Stop,” she pleads, unable to put a shape to the ideas she spent the last hours mulling over.

And the Doctor does: she still and looks up at Yaz with eyes that see too much when they can bear to try. “Yaz,” she whispers as she gives in. “I might need a doctor.” Even with a tired smile the admission is so heartbreaking, in the way of strong people who see asking for help as a fault, that Yaz almost regrets wanting it.

“Okay,” she says, “does the TARDIS count?” because they’re miles away from anything else, in a time where medicine might not be advanced enough even if the Doctor didn’t have a different anatomy. 

“It does.” The words are as rough as her smile, but her eyes still shine when she looks at Yaz. 

So Yaz puts a hand behind her back to pull her up and takes in the groans, the whines, the cries; they stab through her but they belong to her, too. She won’t ignore them. 

And Yaz has one last answer to give: belly already full of love she might drown next. But still, love wouldn’t spill out, because hearts are not made of glass.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [bloggin'](https://kinsbournescream.tumblr.com) come talk!  
> Also, kudos?  
> Also, comment??  
> Also, I still love you all.


End file.
